The present invention relates to a lightweight and self-contained appliance enabling digital maps to be read and enabling local information to be associated therewith, in particular to replace paper guidebooks, and paper geographical maps, topographical maps or road maps.
Paper maps suffer from numerous drawbacks and limitations, and in particular:
they are unhandy (map size does not make for ease of manipulation); PA1 they are fragile (because they are handled so much); PA1 they are discontinuous (several maps are necessary to cover a given territory); PA1 they are of limited information capacity (a map with too much detail is unreadable) thus making it impossible, in particular, to gain access to additional local information (a map needs to be used in association with a guidebook); PA1 they cannot be updated (an out-of-date paper map must be discarded); and PA1 scale is fixed (to change scale it is necessary to change map).
Systems for navigation and for providing assistance in car driving are known that calculate the position of a vehicle relative to a digital road map background. However, such systems are typically complex, e.g. relying on special road infrastructure, or they are expensive, and not self-contained, thus corresponding to a limited part of the use to which a geographical map or town plan on paper can be put.